2

POV: Serena Vale

“Are you hurt?”

I blink up at him. Kai Riven is taller this close, the kind of tall that makes shadows consider their options. Storm-gray eyes, tattoos like thunder scribbled across his forearms, and a quiet that feels like a held blade. My mouth opens, then shuts. I realize my hands are shaking and try to fold them into fists before he sees.

“I’m—fine,” I lie, the word snapping like a thin twig.

His gaze drops to my right wrist. It’s already blooming purple where Jace grabbed me. The Alpha King reaches out, slow enough to be a question. My breath tangles. I don’t answer, but I don’t pull away, and that’s enough.

His fingers curl around my wrist. The contact is warm, steady, impossibly careful. He turns my arm to the light spilling from the gym windows. I feel the shape of his touch everywhere, like his hand is bigger than his hand.

“You shouldn’t let him put his hands on you,” he murmurs.

My throat tightens. Lyria stirs in my mind, prick-eared and trembling. Careful. He’s the storm and the shore at once.

I force out, “I didn’t let him. He—” The words crack. “He did it because he could.”

Kai’s jaw moves, the smallest flex of anger. “He won’t again.”

A shiver licks up my spine. I yank my wrist back against instinct and pride. “Why do you care?” It comes out too sharp, all glass and panic. “You don’t even know me.”

He watches me like I’m a horizon he intends to reach anyway. “I’m trying to figure that out.”

The world tilts. I don’t know whether to run or stand still and let the night rewrite me.

The gym doors slam open behind us. I flinch. Laughter spills out, then dies mid-breath. Jace stands in the doorway, shoulders squared, eyes already narrowed. He sees Kai’s hand fall from my wrist. He sees my wrist. He sees me, and the calculation in his face carves me open.

“Serena.” His voice reaches for me like a leash. “We need to talk.”

Kai shifts, not much—just enough that Jace has to look up to meet his eyes. The air thickens. If tension had a sound, it would be the electric grind between them.

Jace forces a laugh that trembles at the edges. “I didn’t realize the royal guard was picking up runaway dates now.”

Kai doesn’t blink. “I’m not your guard.”

Jace swallows. His gaze flicks to my wrist again and back to Kai. “This is school property. You can’t just—what, corner students? Touch them?”

“I asked,” Kai says mildly, like the truth is a blade that doesn’t need sharpening. “She didn’t say no.”

“I did,” I cut in, heat rushing my cheeks. I push my hair behind my ear with a hand that won’t stop shaking. “I said I’m fine.”

Kai’s eyes find me, soften a fraction. “Are you?”

The question is a hand around my heartbeat. I hate how much I want to set it there.

Jace steps forward, chin up, a prince in a borrowed crown. “This is between me and Serena.”

“Then you should have kept your hands gentle,” Kai says, every syllable even. “You didn’t.”

Jace’s nostrils flare. The pack heir in him wakes, wounded. “Careful.”

Kai tilts his head. “I am.”

The music inside shifts to a high-pitched scream of synths, some DJ drowning the gym’s humiliation with noise. Out here, the night collects our breath and keeps it. I can feel students peeking through the door crack, phones raised—tiny eyes, recording.

I take a step back, chest flooding with chaos. “Both of you—stop. Please.”

Jace looks at me like I’m the one who dropped fire on the floor. “Serena, I told you—”

“I heard you.” The words taste like blood and metal. “Everyone heard you.”

His mouth tightens. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make it make sense,” I whisper. “Make rejection in front of the entire class make sense. Make bruises make sense.”

Jace’s gaze flickers—guilt, then fear, then the old arrogance stitching itself back together. “It was better to be clear.”

“Clear is a conversation. Not a ceremony execution.” My voice breaks, then knits itself back up because I refuse to give him more pieces of me. “Don’t talk to me like you did me a favor.”

Kai watches me like he’s memorizing how my defiance looks poured into my bones. He says nothing. He doesn’t need to.

A gust of November air barrels between us, cold and clean. It burns the inside of my lungs. Lyria presses against my mind, close enough to be my spine. We are not small. Don’t let them make us small.

I nod—maybe to her, maybe to myself. I face Kai because I can’t face Jace without collapsing into smoke. “Thank you,” I say, voice low. “For… asking.”

His jaw eases. “You’re welcome.”

I step back again. Gravity should be a law. Tonight it’s a suggestion. Everything in me is collapsing and expanding at once.

“I need to go,” I say, but my feet don’t move.

Jace reaches for me and flinches at his own reflex. “Serena—”

“No.” My word cuts cleaner than I feel. “Don’t touch me again.”

Kai’s gaze glances off Jace and returns to me, steady as tide. “Don’t go home tonight.”

The sentence lands like a bell inside my ribs—one, clear, ringing tone. I stare at him. “What?”

“Don’t go home,” he repeats, softer, as if soft will help it slide into me. “Not tonight.”

“Why?” It’s too many questions crammed into one word—why me, why now, why do you look at me like that, why does my wolf stand and bow without being asked.

He pauses. For a heartbeat I see something raw flash through his eyes, like lightning looking for a tree. “Because I don’t like what I smell on the wind.”

The hair at my nape rises. “What does that even—”

Jace snorts a brittle laugh. “You can’t be serious. You expect her to obey some cryptic royal order because you showed up to a high school dance?”

Kai’s mouth doesn’t move into a smile, not exactly. “I don’t expect Serena to obey anything.” He studies me like the question is already answered. “I expect her to live.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything but hold the weight of his words and try not to buckle. Lyria leans into me, fur against my shaking. He means it. He means it.

“Is this… about me?” I whisper. “About the Trials?”

Kai’s silence is not empty; it hums. He glances past me at the gym doors, at the slit of bright chaos, at the students pressing against the glass with their hungry eyes. Then he looks back at me as if weighing truth against time.

“I can’t say more here,” he says, almost apologetic. “But don’t go home.”

Jace throws his hands out. “You can’t kidnap her.”

“I didn’t say come with me,” Kai replies, eyes still on mine. “Just—don’t go home.”

The words click and stick. The bruise at my wrist throbs in time with my pulse. I swallow. “Where am I supposed to go?”

For a second—just a second—his gaze dips to my mouth, then returns to my eyes with a snap, like he scolds himself for wanting. “Somewhere public. Somewhere bright. A friend’s house. A café that never closes.” A beat. “Not home.”

Jace scoffs. “This is insane.”

Insane is a gym full of kids clapping for heartbreak. Insane is a boy grabbing me after breaking me. Insane is a king looking at me like fate just walked out of the forest and handed him a map.

I nod, as if my body makes choices before my mind. “Okay.”

Relief loosens something in Kai’s shoulders that I didn’t realize was tight. “Good.”

Someone inside yells, “Is that the Alpha King?” Another voice, shrill with Hailey’s delight: “Get this on video!”

Kai’s eyes flick to the doors, then to the parking lot, calculating routes like he’s memorized every shadow. He steps back into the dark as if it opens for him on command.

“Serena,” he says, my name turning to heat in his mouth. “Trust me.”

I don’t know him. I shouldn’t. But the night between us feels alive, and my wolf is staring through my eyes, and every part of me is ringing with a warning I can’t translate.

“Okay,” I whisper again, because I don’t have anything else.

His gaze holds mine one last second, binding without binding. Then he’s gone—like a cut in the night sealed itself shut. One blink and the shadows swallow him. The gym’s noise rushes back like a tide, leaving me damp with shock.

I stand there, shaking, breathing Kai’s words instead of air. Don’t go home tonight. They loop through me, steady as a drum. I rub my wrist, the bruise warm under my fingers, and realize my hands aren’t trembling as badly anymore.

Jace lingers in the doorway, conflicted carved into his face. “Serena, I—”

“I’m not going home,” I say, surprised at how calm I sound. “Whatever this is, whatever you did… I’m not going back there tonight.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. For once, Jace Blackthorn doesn’t have a script.

I turn away before the tears decide they still own me. The parking lot is a black ocean, cars glittering like anchored boats. My phone buzzes in my pocket, a sharp sting that makes me jump.

Unknown number.

My pulse spikes. I swipe to open.

A single text sits on the screen, clean and quiet as a command.

Don’t go home. —K.R.